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by Manel Dridi Akid

Created on: October 05, 2009

E-learning and the psychology of the learners: traditional vs virtual civilization course

Virtual learning is starkly replacing the 'real' universities, the 'human' teachers and the 'tangible' materials with digital and untouchable educational components: "There is an evolution from the bricks and mortar University to electronic-based university -from walls surrounded university to wires surrounded university - from human professors to digital professors from hard books to electronic books."( Alballooshi, Fawzi. Virtual Education: cases in learning and TeachingTechnologies )

The advocates of virtual university argue that it would provide access to that part of the population who would not be able to attend a physical campus for reasons such as distance, disability and need for flexibility. Students who want to attend traditional courses but for various reasons skipped some lectures, could catch up through the access of the lecture online: "A student who attended a classroom and missed a specific point in the lecture or completely missed a class due to some business or other obligation, may return to its video recording on the internet at his or her own convenience to recapture the missed knowledge." (A. Mirza. Finally Gaining Legitimacy in Saudi Arabia?)

In traditional lectures about foreign or even national civilization, students tend to be less ambitious than in other lectures. Studying about the past or current events attracts few learners who impetuously like the subject. Some of the students prefer a ready-made course given by the teacher that they will learn by heart for the day of the exam to be forgotten later. When students are given tutorials to be read and interpreted in class, few of them would find the link between the tutorials and the contexts. They would make various attempts guessing the implicit meaning, sometimes giving interesting interventions, sometimes irrelevant and sometimes funny ones. They will 'compete' to give the right answer to the teacher and to show their intelligence. Interaction involves a wide range of activities not only limited to exchanging ideas: "Interaction should include complex activities for students, such as engaging and reflecting, annotating, questioning, answering, pacing, elaborating discussing inquiring, problem solving, linking, constructing, analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing" (Patricia C Borstorff and S Keith Lowe, 2007)

By asking varied questions and showing different opinions, students would enlarge the scope of their learning about civilization - which is also valid to any other subject. The interaction between them is vital for learning and said to be innate: "students by nature are 'social learners' who usually prefer to learn in groups and interact with their peers." ( Resnick, David .The Virtual University and College Life )

Most of the time, the psychological side of the student's personality cripples his/her self-reliance and the feeling of responsibility, especially when talking about beginners: "students may not be motivated or disciplined enough to complete the course if they are not held accountable for the material to an instructor as they would be in a traditional classroom setting." (Patricia C Borstorff and S Keith Lowe)

The civilization course is often viewed as uninteresting and sometimes meaningless for students, which requires teacher's efforts to make the course as interesting as possible. If the civilization course is seen merely as the story of the old times it would definitely be viewed boring and cold. Students' reaction to any course stems from their feelings; they would either say "we like this course" or "we don't like it". Therefore, the emotional side of the learners is vital for their acceptance and thus their willingness to understand, follow and get involved in the civilization course.

Beginners, who are predominantly young students, came from a secondary school where they used to rely on the teacher for guidance and knowledge. A compromise, a "blended e-learning environment" could be achieved through a combination of the virtual and real university. Consequently, the student may attend a real lecture on civilization, enjoy the class discussions, jokes and drawings and then attend a virtual course for better clarification and extended information.

Students got accustomed to traditional classroom learning where they can interact with their peers, exchange ideas, ask direct questions to the teacher and get answers on the spot. E-learning may offer them some of the traditional course features. In any classroom, there exists a variety of students' characters; those who are shy, those who are highly motivated, those who dislike the course etc...The teacher may observe the students, while giving them the lecture, and through eye contact, the tutor may feel that the lecture was not understood properly or that some students have enquiries about the topic. The teacher would try to explain the lesson in a different and simpler way without embarrassing these students. This would foster the students' interest in the subject and would grow in him/her the feeling of comfort instead of anxiety and feeling of loss. However, in an e-learning course, the direct answers to students' questions could not be possible. This is due to the overload of information the teaching medium has to carry out and the huge number of questions poured from the large on-line learners. Shy students are not noticed and less motivated students would find letting the course down easier than in a traditional course:

Not all students are good self-motivators, and hence, they may easily fall behind. This may lead students to dropping out of e-learning courses more so than from traditional courses. Another problem has to deal with the lack of face-to-face interaction between the faculty and students. This may have a negative effect on the student's ability to fully benefit from the faculty member, and in the absence of a quick response to a student's set of questions this may lead to the student's loss of interest. (A. Mirza )

Discussions between teachers and students are generally about the course content, the planned activities, the expected difficulties and the way students might contribute to the civilization course completion. But they also discuss about other topics relating to the course, there are some jokes made to explain the lesson or some comparison between a key element in the lesson and its equivalent in the students' culture. The students would concentrate on the teacher's face to follow his/ her explanation and moves. These discussions would attract students to the lesson and to the teacher's way of giving the course. Moreover, students would feel enthusiastic about the course and eager to know about history.

A civilization course involves a variety of information and requires extra-reading to better understand certain events or concepts. The internet provides students with a wide range of diverse information which might result in students' sense of loss and confusion. Thus, their interest in the civilization course can dwindle without the teacher's guidance for what to be selected and read: "when information overload occurs, learning time increase and learning motivation decreases" (Patricia C Borstorff and S Keith Lowe)/ "Because of the lack of human contact and personal instruction, the student may have serious difficulties grasping the material necessary in order to be successful in the E-learning course."(ibid)

E-learning is said to have several advantages, especially for working students. They can follow their lectures and keep up their jobs at the same time. Students have the complete freedom to study where and when they like. However, studying alone may result in isolation and retreat from society. The absence of face-to-face interaction between the students themselves and the teacher would make learning 'cold' and 'impersonal'. Some of the subjects, namely humanities, elicit some emotional links in the classroom environment. Students taking humanity courses need to express their surprise, admiration or discontent about what they are learning. This may not be possible in a virtual lecture despite the fact that students could exchange e-mails and meet in virtual clubs. However, any students' comments which come after the course would not be spontaneous and interesting for the others.

Moreover, the concept of learning anytime may not bet affordable. Some courses are given on-line at a specific time where the students have the opportunity to hear and see the teacher or the faculty member and can also hear other students' comments. This means that there is a fixed time for the lecture and all the students regardless of their geographical location have to be on-line:

Finally, it may be appropriate to say that the advent of the virtual university has many advantages for knowledge acquisition through the endless waves of displayed information on the net. However, virtual learning has to be supported by traditional courses in built universities to preserve the human side of teaching and learning. The psychological side of the students has to be focused on because it is a key element in the teaching and learning process. A humanity course, in particular, needs this side to be understood and accepted.

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